A Choice In Trust

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
- Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1997

For my worried mind, it was 6 p.m. on an idle Wednesday when Matic told me she had breast cancer. Almost immediately all the worries I had up to that point evaporated into triviality. I had just returned home from work curious as to how the biopsy had gone earlier in the day. Matic urged me not to miss work for the biopsy - 'all they are going to do is take a sample and send me on my way'.

She greeted me at her bathroom door, eyes wide open, lower lip quivering. "He says I have breast can...", she succumbed to emotion before she could mutter the word. All I remember is grasping her shoulders, looking her directly in the eyes and saying over and over again 'okay ... okay'. For the next few minutes we hugged and we cried. Then we spoke and speculated about what next.

Officially, it would take a day and a half for the biopsy results to come back, but the doctor performing the biopsy told Matic bluntly and directly that she almost certainly had breast cancer; that if the biopsy came back negative, he was going to re-send it as he would not believe the results. There was no need to re-send however as forty-ish hours later the call came that the biopsy samples definitively confirmed breast cancer.

It is amazing the deluge of appointments, consultations, and procedures that commence once that phone call is received. There is a terrific sense that the institution of breast cancer has a well-defined process and community. You also quickly realize that your normal life will be radically redefined for the immediate future; that you will have to conform to the process, rather than attempt to define the process. The process cares not what you had planned for the holidays nor what big meeting is on the agenda at work next week. The cancer train has left the station and you are merely a passenger.

"It's treatable."

Matic and I heard those two words from family, friends, but most importantly, from the medical staff of the various oncology offices we visited. They are soothing and reassuring words and we are grateful to hear them from her doctors; I suspect not every cancer patient gets to hear them. They are however fraught with the misleading allusion that cancer can be treated as easily as taking an aspirin for a headache or applying a cream to a burn.

There is no free lunch in treating cancer, the treatments are invasive and intense. The medications injected into Matic generally do not discriminate between cancer cells and healthy cells; it is a Shock and Awe attack against the entire battlefield. Healthy parts of Matic's body will be temporarily sacrificed in the war against the tumor. Unlike the more mundane "It's treatable" scenarios like a broken bone, the doctors in the cancer scenario thus far have only spoken in absolutes when discussing side effects. Rarely will they speak in absolutes when discussing final prognosis - "You will lose your hair, it should grow back". There is a strong sense of uncertainty. Matic and I tame the fear of uncertainty by reminding ourselves "It's treatable".

Ultimately, you accept the reality of having a choice between two options - treatment or no treatment. The former is a choice in trust and the latter is a choice in fate. And so we take a journey that blindsided us; a journey that neither of us ever considered. It is however a journey that millions of women have taken before Matic. There is an odd comfort found in that fact. In many ways, the very notion of "It's treatable" is made possible by the millions of women that went before Matic. And in turn, Matic's journey will help make "It's treatable" possible for women that will take their journey after her.